Anyone noticed slow project file saving? Cubase7.5

I feel your pain, el prof. (Are you Larry from the old VST list?)

Something has been changed in 7.5 which seriously affects save times, and it’s not just that the Project file is so big (though it is a lot bigger than it used to be, specially after using a lot of offline audio processing)

It’s not as simple as Automatic Hitpoint detection, either. If I have a drum kit recorded (say 10 tracks), all’s well until I slice and crossfade it to quantise. After that save goes from a split second to 25+ seconds. This is with a 6 core 3.3GHZ MacPro with a SSD media drive.

OK, here are the hard figures:

Project with 14 mono/stereo audio tracks, 24bit 44.1k, including 8 drum tracks (7 mono, 1 stereo) in folder track. Song length 5 min, 130 bars at 106BPM

Project file size: 3.7MB
Save time: <0.5 sec

Same project with drum tracks sliced in Quantise editor, approx 12 slices per bar, so about 1600 slices.

Project file size: 5.7MB
Save time: 3.5 seconds

Quantise the slices and crossfade them

Project file size: 5.7MB
Save time: 26 seconds!!!

And get this: Bounce all the drum tracks and replace:

Project size: 2.6MB (!)
Save time: < 1/2 second!

So it appears it’s something to do with the crossfades - presumably Cubase is going through each of them to see if they’ve changed since the last save. Obviously if it’s possible to bounce the edited tracks, that is a workaround, but that’s not always possible.

I seriously hope this problem is fixable because it’s a workflow killer.

HI David, yes it’s Larry G from the old VST list… hope all is well and happy Holidays to you and all the Forum folks.

I am in the process of bouncing, but as stated in a prior post…seconds would be a blessing. I’m into minutes (like over 5).

I look at my cubase file and note that there are 2 files one is the cubase project file called: ABC.cpr
Then there’s this other file: ABC.csh

the cpr file right now is 245 megabytes
the csh file right now is 1.07 gigabytes
the bak file (backup) which is 201 megabytes
The images folder is 253 megabytes
and my audio folder is 24 GB

I’m guessing the csh file is the raw data from the project window (all audio) and the audio wave files.
and I’m guessing that this file is what’s taking so long to update, which in most cases nothings changed much, but Cubase for some reason doesn’t have a way of knowing that or the programmers are being cautious so they are always saving it as if it’s the first time with no speed efficient and still safe way of improving that save time.

I’m also guessing that everytime I do anything that gets a prompt that the part (segment of the total of the original 2 hr say guitar track is edited) is part of something larger that will also be effected…
and say I used the time stretch arrow to lengthen a decay to match all the other rhythm instruments for a tight ending,
I use the option to create a new piece of audio.
so audio folder has gotten even larger from the original audio tracks only amount.

At some point, I think I’ll have to finish all the bouncing (which I choose to replace, after trying the other methond which does leave me with a bounced track on the arrange window…dumb. why bounce if you didn’t want it on that page??? - that should be a preference option also. Ok to have the original in the Pool as a backup and the bounced track on the arrange window, but don’t ever need the opposite. Is it actually 'replacing it in the pool as well? I hope not. - sometimes these things need clarification in the way they are stated in these warnings.)

Oh well, on with the Motley…hope the bouncing works out.
I read that some editing will undo all the pitching done in vari audio.

P353 says:

If you want to hear your modifications in Cubase Artist, you will have to bounce the audio files that have been edited with the Cubase VariAudio features.

So that seems to indicate that bouncing burns in the vari pitch into the resulting file created.

Then on P355 it says:

Applying editing, offline processes, and VariAudio
The following offline processes and edits that affect the length of the audio file may lead to the reanalysis of the audio material:

and goes on to explain that ending with:

! Because of the reanalysis any existing VariAudio data becomes invalid. Therefore, you should always apply offline processing or edits before using the VariAudio features.


Due to the data gained during this process, the audio and thus the size of your project can increase. Furthermore, the analysis of long audio files might take some time.


! Editing the segmentation always leads to a recalculation of the segment’s pitch. Therefore, it is recommended that you edit the segmentation before changing the pitch.


In Segments mode, the segments are shown with a hatched background. You can switch between “Pitch & Warp” and “Segments” mode (see “Pitch & Warp tool” on page 358) by pressing the [Tab] key.

So I’m reading the manual and trying to grasp what procedures will negate the varipitch work and which will not.
Wish there was just a listing of all that will and all that you can do after pitching that won’t negate it.

Bouncing for now just to be safe. I feel that I’m going to have to change the entire way I’d prefer to work to adopt to this handcuff in procedure. I don’t think that this happens (but could be wrong) with auto tune and melodyne.
As the statement above about the analysis of long audio files might (and does indeed) take some time (a long time in my case) is a parallel problem along with the saving time…grinding my work flow to a grind…

peace out, time for a cup of hot chocolate,

Merry Xmas to you all,

el profe

Also, I just noticed looking into the pool that I have a ton of zero bytes waveform audio files.

Are they the leftover results of the crashing/quits during auto saves that happened during playback?
Probably (guessing)

My orig mono audio files are all 903.3 MB (24 tracks)
Then I have one stereo mix from a camera feed off the board that is 1.79 GB
A bunch of bounced/pitched audio files in the under 30 MB category

I’m gonna see if there’s a Pool feature to get rid of those zero files that might be extra baggage.
Probably not good to have them.

Larry,

Can’t help directly with the Variaudio / bounce question, as I seldom use it - I’m very at home with Auto-tune, which I usually apply on a clip-by-clip basis as an offline audio process (sometimes cut words in half…).

This workflow is very good for me as I work on a short section, process it (which is effectively creates a new version, cross-fade if necessary, and move on. At the end I have a track cut into tiny pieces and I notice that save times are getting longer, so I usually bounce the track, after making a copy which I keep disabled in the project (easier than re-assembling from the pool) in case I want to revisit any of the off-line treatments.

Not sure about the zero byte files, which I’ve often noticed when I make archives of projects. I think they are some kind of marker which Cubase uses in some mysterious way. I haven’t had any problems resulting from deleting them.

I remain hopeful that Steinberg are working on cutting these terrible save time issues.

SOLUTION:

This may not work for everyone, but I was having the same problem and found an easy solution.

For some reason, the session that was an issue was using the default c:/mydocs/cubasesessions/ folder as it’s project folder. The session was officially in a directory on my audio drive and the files were there as well but for some reason if I went into the audio pool it showed the ‘project folder’ as c:/

I couldn’t figure out any way to change this so I did the ‘file/ backup project’ function and saved the whole thing to a new directory. VOILA! Instant save - no problem. I’m not sure if this is because of the project folder or because saving as a backup gets rid of some extraneous crap that was causing the slow saves. Either way, it’s fixed and I’m happy. Back to making music.

OK, so here’s my solution too. After a while of searching and trying, I just decided to get rid of the old template, which I’ve been using for a really long time now (since C5). It was full of old (and new) Plugins. It took almost a day to set up the new template in C7.5, with all of the Audio/Midi Tracks, labling, VST’s, VSTi’s, mixer, settings and so on. I also set a new location for the Audio Files. Since then, with the new template, Cubase saves fast again like it used to. The new projects also load a lot faster.

Here’s a comparison…
Projects with the old template (since the update to C7.5)
Load time: 3-5mins
Save time: 1min

Projects with the new template
Load time: 30 - 45s
Save time: 3-5s

Good idea. I remember I had a similar problem that this (or Save As) fixed way back with Cubase 4.x. I’ll try this when I get a chance. The test would be doing a Backup but not changing the save location. I am hoping it rewrites the project file and as you said, only writes what is necessary.

Seriously? Interesting, I will have to give this a shot.

I’ve had consistent (although not great) load/save times through Cubase 5, 6, 7, and even up to 7.5.0.

However - on 7.5.10 something weird has come up in just the past couple days where the SAME projects that USED to save consistently around 5 seconds now take 15-20 seconds to save. Am I missing something? Nothing’s really changed. Interestingly, when I do a Save As, and I watch the Finder window where I’m saving to, NO .CPR FILE shows up for like 10-15 seconds while the mouse stays on spinning beachball (as if there’s something waiting to timeout) and THEN Cubase does its 5 second file save.

Weird… And frustrating.

btw - my sessions have only Instrument tracks and MIDI data - no audio or audio edits.

Also - having constant issues with “Waiting for video service…” message. I assume this has something to do with save time increasing? Just a guess.

Yes, that “Waiting for video service…” message is a new for me and is happening quite frequently for me if I have a video in the project. I never EVER had that in the past. But perhaps that is something that vs a crash or freeze in the past is a good thing. I’m not sure. But it is a new behavior.

Yeah funny thing is I NEVER have video in my sessions and the “Waiting for video service…” error happens on almost every session now. Only started happening since OS X Mavericks. Really depending on 7.5.20 to fix this but won’t be surprised if it’s still present.

No issues here saving in 1 second or less.

Yeah, I have a 3.5 i7 quad core MAC with 32gigs of RAM and a 3 TB fusion drive.

I’m working on a movie so it is an admittedly very large file with tons of automation and stuff. But, yeah, it takes about 20-25 seconds to save.

It is pretty annoying. I wonder if it’s something that can be fixed by Cubase…

It might be an issue with very large projects like film scoring. Looks like they’ve solved it in the up coming update.
As per Helge’s news announcement: Issue that interferes with the “Save” and “Close” behavior has been resolved.

Experiencing this for the past week for some reason. I look and see my .bak and CPR files are 56mb on a very simple project with no midi, no FX in and about 20 audio tracks in the project.

I have an autosave set every 5 minutes as I experience crashes - but this grinds the system to a halt saving taking about 30 seconds to save!!!

Jut a quick feedback. I have a sound design project and save times for me are over 2 minutes usually (even after I upgraded my Ram to 8GB), which makes working in Cubase almost impossible - even if I just changed a little thing - like a crossfade of two regions. Its so annoying…ughh

I find myself normally working with live show projects that I record as well as direct the video shoots and have to edit them. Both types of editing (video and audio) just can’t be done with my choices: Final Cut X and Cubase 7.5 in OSX 8.5 in 32 bit mode (due to not having the money to update a lot of plugins and software to run in X.9)… On an 8 core early 2009 Mac Pro. However, using only FW 800 (no 400) and no USB drives (only keyboard, iLoks and BluRay read/write disc drive for making blu ray dvds) AND keeping my lengths under an hour on either editing software and NOT running any other programs (unless for a minute to check email or FB - but quiting when leaving on the breaks)…that’s the only way to manage.
Also on Final Cut, I use a cool program called: Event Manager X that puts any Events or Projects not needed into a hidden folder so it doesn’t eat up CPU or RAM while sitting there loaded and not being used.
Perhaps Cubase needs to have something like that. I mean if you chop up your audio and say normalized a piece or tune it and save/render/bounce it, you soon get a ton of audio files in your pool. I don’t know if they are RAM killers or not, but if they are it would be nice to be able to have a utility to hide them if they aren’t necessary and just sitting in the pool as a ‘go to prior audio before bouncing’ as a backup of sorts. I rarely ever need to go back to those files. But Once in A While… a client who I tune up (ahem…pitchey stuff we say) comes in a week later and says, what happened I sound like crap (I guess when you sing out of tune all your life, that sounds perfectly good to you, hahaha AND I"M NOT TALKING WILLIE NELSON HERE babe)… hahah…
so then I need to go back to what I call the virgin audio tracks that I save called that if ever that should happen. Then the client pays me all over again to tune it up after they sit thru a couple of repeated plays with the virgin audio tracks (having once or twice auditioning the tuned tracks and telling me to go back)… the residual tuned version sticks in their memory, but they want to walk thru the tuning and feel a part of the process and decline it when they don’t like it. ALL GOOD, I don’t have a problem with that…)
Main point being (sorry for the ramble, too much coffee…got a new machine today at costco…works GREATTTT) that IF those unused files piling up in the audio pool are causing RAM issues, then the program or a utility program similar to Event Manager X, should be able to hide those unused but need to be saved files, so you can unhide them if need be in such cases where that would be necessary.

Same thing for me save are very slow ,
i’m on trial for nuendo and cubase .


this is unusable in studio pro. the client can’t wait 30 sec for each save , so i have to disable auto-save , and i can lose big part of the project .

I’m happy to report that so far (in the months since launch), Cubase Pro 8 has fixed the slow file saving bug for me. I’m up to version 8.0.5 now and it’s still holding strong.

Hey all, my first post here :slight_smile:

Just to report… having long saving times (not long as some of you but still…), 10 sec or so, for saving empty project, with no audio, midi events, nothing. Just loaded my template with around 40 Kontakt instances full of instruments ( every instance with 8-16 instruments, samples all purged). Around 250 midi tracks, around 100 kontakt outputs.

I did some testing…all those instruments loaded in Kontakts are the reason for long save time. If I unload them, and leave all kontakt instances empty, all the midi tracks, audio outs and all plugins (every audio out has instance of virtual scoring stage 2) stay as well, instant saving time are back.

I see VE Pro as obvious solution for this, but… is this really necessary? I feel like the reason for my long saving times is the same as all of the users are reporting.

Is C 8.05 resolved saving time for all of you from this thread?

My specs are:

cubase 8.05
win7 64
i7 2600k
32 ram
rme hdsp 9632

Thx

Milos

Curious if any of you who stuck with 7.5 had any luck in solving this? I remember it happening to me at least once before and I could have sworn it was something as simple as repairing permissions that fixed it, tho that’s not been the case this time. Here’s what I’ve done:

  1. started in “safe mode” and trashed prefs and started again
  2. run maintenance scripts
  3. repaired permissions a bunch
  4. repaired disk and repaired permissions via startup DVD
  5. Installed most recent e-licenser software
  6. closed non-essential programs when I’m working
  7. re-saved projects to new folders via backup project

When I restarted from the install DVD and repaired the startup disk then repaired permissions via Disk Utility it was fixed for a few minutes, then the spinning beach ball came back.